Film
What's on at the cinema plus reviews of the latest movie and DVD releases
Bookmark this pageMission Impossible (1996)
Director: Brian De Palma
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
Twenty minutes into this big-budget update of the '70s spy series, half the cast has been wiped out, and Cruise's Ethan Hunt has been 'disavowed' by his employers, the CIA. To clear his name and avenge the death of his mentor Jim Phelps (Voight), Hunt assembles a crew of rogue agents to break in to CIA headquarters, playing a precarious double game with breathless self-assurance. 'Mission: Impenetrable': a bewildering, ludicrous, but mostly fun, sometimes even smart postscript to a genre that went out of fashion with the Cold War. There's more and less here than meets the eye. More, because De Palma, the cinematographer and the screenwriters have concocted an elaborate series of conceits and deceits, masks and trompe l'oeils, which slyly undermine the paranoid imperatives of the original series - and, indeed, the Cold War itself. Less, because De Palma is the most hermetic of American film-makers; combine that with the pressure to deliver a mainstream blockbuster and you've got a recipe for superficiality. Despite the snags, De Palma remains a virtuoso puppet-master, pulling the strings taut in a nail-biting robbery sequence, switching from micro to macro with Hitchcockian panache, and finally letting rip with a hell-for-leather climax.Author: TCh
Cast & crew
Director: Brian De Palma
Producer: Tom Cruise, Paula Wagner
Cast: Tom Cruise, Jon Voight, Emmanuelle Béart, Henry Czerny, Jean Reno, Ving Rhames, Kristin Scott-Thomas, Vanessa Redgrave, Ingeborga Dapkunaite, Emilio Estevez full cast
Genre(s): Action/Adventure
Duration: 110 mins
Most popular on this site
Top Stories
Has David Cronenberg turned tame?
Has director David Cronenberg veered too far from his radical and bloody roots with new film 'A Dangerous Method'?
Pop-up cinema for Valentine's Day
Side-step romantic clichés with some alternative Valentine’s viewing
The 10 worst date movies
Just in time for Valentine's Day, we present ten of the least romantic films ever made
Where to watch this year's Oscar-nominated films
Find out where to watch 2012's Oscar-nominated films in London cinemas
10 unlikely badboy biopics
Featuring Phil Collins, Jeremy Clarkson, Nick Clegg, David Starkey and a host of other unlikely subjects
What do you think?
Post your review now